


at least once more

by Anemoi



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Black Mirror: Be Right Back AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 04:05:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14608911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi/pseuds/Anemoi
Summary: Things end on a Wednesday.





	at least once more

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redandgold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold/gifts).



> explaining notes: it's a black mirror au cos becks here is exactly like that one robot in the series and so i glossed over some of the mechanics of it... but i think it should still make sense if you don't know what happened... hopefully.. also most of the narrative is from black mirror.. im.. unoriginal 
> 
> to rach bc i SHOULDVE JUST FINISHED IT AGES AGO but i loff u .. miss ur paws.....

 

 

Things end on a Wednesday. He gets the text and it didn’t really seem real- none of it. He pulls up to the side of the road and just stares at Paul’s text, the words not making sense. 

_ When?  _ He texts back.  

_ This morning.  _

He waits for it to start sinking in. But it doesn’t. The fact sits on top of his consciousness like oil, thick and immiscible and impossible to understand. 

 

-

 

He waits two weeks before he makes the order. Looking back, he couldn’t remember what happened in those weeks. He doesn’t remember what he ate, or even if he ate at all. He doesn’t remember who he met during that time, what the weather was like. The days sat shrouded in white fog, out of reach. 

He’s not even sure when he places the order, or if it had gone through at all. Two weeks after that, there’s a box on the doorstep when he comes home. 

  
  


-

  
  


Gary puts the package in the bathtub. He leaves the lights in the bathroom shut, then sits outside the door, legs stretched to the opposite wall in the hallway. He tries not to listen but he couldn’t help it- the house is utterly silent. There are soft sounds coming from inside the bathroom, but they were gentle. Like someone inflating a lilo, maybe. Something expanding, taking shape. 

 

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he wakes up because something’s dripping on him. 

 

“Gary?” 

 

He looks up. David’s grinning at him, hugging himself. Water drips off his hair, too long and spiking up from the moisture. He’s naked. 

 

“Mate, I’m fucking freezing. Do you have anymore towels?” 

Gary looks at him. He says, “Yeah. I’ll get you some clothes. You’ve got loads left over from when you used to spend the night.” 

  
  
  


-

 

When he gets up in the morning David’s eating his weetabix in the kitchen. This was unexpected; David never got up earlier than him. Gary drags out a chair and just sits there, watching him. 

“You can eat?” Gary says.   
  
David gives him a look. “Of course I eat, Gary.” 

“Where does it go?” Gary says.   
  
David keeps shovelling weetabix into his mouth. “You don’t want to know.” He smiles. 

The smile hurt Gary in a way he couldn’t explain. He stands. 

“You shouldn’t be awake so early,” he says. “That’s not how-” 

David’s looking at him, head slightly tilted, his eyes narrowed in the most familiar way. “What?” 

“That’s not how Becks was,” Gary finishes. 

“Oh,” David says, crease flattening between his brows, “Okay. I’ll remember next time.” 

 

-

 

He digs out the order later, when David’s lying in the guest room with his eyes closed. He looked asleep. Apparently David was an algorithm written up to include every piece of footage and audio there ever was of David Beckham. Becks was a celebrity- there’d been tons of videos of him, doing everything from cooking Gary dinner to scoring in the World Cup. That explained it, really. Every time he tried to recall those fog filled weeks after - after  _ what _ , he couldn’t say, not out loud, not even in his own head - he couldn’t see anything with clarity. There are two voids now, both named David, one a black hole he’s circling carefully in his head, one in his guest room breathing in and out, snoring just a little. 

 

-

 

David can play football. This much was evident- he’s every bit as beautiful as all the videos of Becks playing over the years. He had all of Becks’ football. 

Except Gary couldn’t convince himself this was true. The real Becks was- he had - there was- Becks had bad days when he couldn't kick a ball right. He had days where he'd be sullen and grouchy in training, and no amount of jostling could get him out of his mood. And he had days when he was transcendent. Like the flash of light glinting off steel, like fluorescence in the middle of a firework. 

David fell into some middle range. He was brilliant, as technically perfect as Becks was on his best days, and he was utterly soulless in his brilliance. David like a diamond, refracting and reflecting off the light that glowed from Becks, nothing except an imitation, something made out of rock. 

 

Gary stands in the rain and watches David kick perfect free kicks, one after the other, straight into the top left corner of the goal, again and again and again. 

 

-

 

David cooks too. He’s good at cooking pasta, good at steaks and can bake a pie when asked to. Gary doesn’t ask. He just watches, nods sometimes when David asks him for a preference -  _ spinach or beans? _ \- tastes things when David brings the wooden spoon to his mouth. 

 

In the soft glow of the kitchen light it’s almost easy to forget David wasn’t Becks. So much, Gary thinks, was just a trick of the light. David smiles exactly like Becks. David stirs the soup around the pot, one hand carelessly propped on his hip, the spoon going counterclockwise twice before clockwise once. Gary didn’t know before this that he knew this was how Becks did it. He must have been paying attention, even if he hadn’t known it. 

 

“Gaz,” Becks says. He’s ladling soup into bowls. It’s squash or something else vaguely orangey, but Gary’s not looking at the soup anymore. A bit of Becks’ hair falls over his forehead and he’s ran out of hands to push it out of the way, so Gary steps closer, reaches out. 

 

He looks at Becks, at his wide eyes and the start of a smile on his lips, the curve of his nose and the faint freckle over his right eyebrow-

 

Gary leans in and kisses him. David’s lips are soft. It felt, for a second, like kissing Becks.

 

“I'm married to Victoria,” David says, eyes wide. He’s touching his mouth with two fingers. “Gary?” 

 

Gary wants to step back, but he couldn’t move. 

  
  


It was obvious, now. The real David was flawed beyond any construction. And Gary loved him because he was flawed. It had become so painfully obvious; the truth he’d been trying to avoid like a man closing his eyes on the railway tracks and listening to the train get louder. No one saw Becks like Gary had seen him, no one saw Becks’ smiles for Gary except Gary. No one saw their kisses, no record remains, nothing but the thump in Gary’s chest reminding him that his was the only heart left beating. 

  
  
  


-

  
  


He’s in the living room alone, and it’s raining outside again. Thunderheads dark against the horizon. He remembers, when he was little, Phil used to be scared of thunder, and so during the storms he’d sit with Phil and hold his hand, and afterward they’d never speak of it. Gary remembers he was fascinated by thunderstorms, yearned to put his palm against the cold glass of the window and maybe feel the earth reverberating. 

 

He remembers Becks loved thunderstorms too. 

 

David’s by the doorway, hesitating. Gary wants to tell him it’s okay, out of some reflexive desire to make him at ease, and wanted to tell him to go out and walk until he hit the sea. And keep walking, anything so that Gary will never have to look at him again, see David’s face twisted in confusion, incomprehension. 

 

“It’s okay,” Gary says. “I’m not angry with you.” 

 

David comes in, approaching Gary slowly like he was some wounded animal. He sits at the edge of the couch, reaches a hand out towards Gary. When Gary doesn’t move, he puts his hand gently over Gary’s. David’s hand is cool. 

 

“Gary,” he says. “Did something happen with the real David Beckham?” 

 

“Yes,” Gary says. Something happened. If he could distill it, that would be the phrase. He says, “Do you like thunderstorms?” 

 

David tips his head slightly, thinking. “No,” he makes a face, the one he makes when he’s scrunching his nose a little bit and trying to look thoughtless and unaffected. The one he makes for the cameras. “They’re too loud.” 

 

“Alright,” Gary says. “Let’s watch some TV then. Drown it out.” 

  
  


-

  
  


Something happened: 

 

He kissed Becks and Becks kissed him back. It wasn’t in the dark, it was in the rain. It was on a pitch. Becks’ eyes were wide open when they broke apart, and he was smiling, hand fisted in Gary’s jersey, pulling him back again. 

  
  
  


-

 

He calls Paul, then explains himself into the silence on the other end. Paul doesn’t say anything until he finishes, then all he says is, “I’m coming over.” 

Gary doesn’t know what to do with David, so he asks him to cook again, and that was how Paul saw him when he came in. Something wrenches inside him, something threatens to break loose and hurtle out of him into somewhere he can never reach, when he see the expression on Paul’s face when he walks into the kitchen

 

David’s whistling while he chopped vegetables. Somehow Gary had forgotten that they all loved him. 

 

“Becks?” Paul says. He puts a hand on David’s shoulder. 

 

“Scholesy,” David says, smiling big like a thousand suns. Paul steps back. His hand falls. 

  
  


-

  
  


Paul calls the rest of them, and everyone arrives as though they’d been expecting it. Gary doesn’t wonder, he just stays by the table and watches David make pasta he’s made hundreds of times before.    
  


“What are we gonna do with him?” Ryan hisses. “It’s not like we can send him back where he comes from!”

“It’s not a him,” Nicky says. He’s not looking at David. “It’s a bloody robot, Ryan.” 

“He acts like David,” Phil says, “He moves like David. He can play fucking football. We can’t reboot him. That’s like- He’s-” he stops.

“Just get him out of here,” Paul says. He’s looking at Gary, who’s looking at David. David had put his knife down, looking from face to face with a perplexed expression, like he was on the edge of some shared joke he was waiting for everyone to enlighten him on. Gary couldn’t bear it, suddenly, the way his expressions were Becks’ yet somehow not. He couldn’t bear the way that he couldn’t tell sometimes, that this wasn’t Becks. He wished Becks were here. He thinks,  _ if it were me Becks would be able to tell exactly what’s different. _

 

“Get him out,” Paul says again, louder. Ryan and Nicky move towards David, who’s still looking up, eyebrows cocked in confusion.

 

“Don’t touch him,” Gary says. He doesn’t remember when he stood up.  “ _ Don’t fucking touch him _ -” 

 

“Let him go, Gaz,” Paul says, his arms are tight around Gary. His fingers digging into Gary’s arms. “Gary. He’s gone. Let him go.” 

 

The last glimpse he has of David is Ryan leading him out of the front door. There’s a bright patch of light in the doorway, a violent kind of sunshine. David looked confused, with a little smile on his face, but he follows Ryan. Ryan has a hand on his elbow. He doesn’t look back at Gary.

 

Gary turns his face into Paul’s chest, concentrates on breathing; Paul’s fingers like iron, anchoring him. 

 

“I never said goodbye,” Gary says. 

  
  
  


-

  
  
  
  


He’s standing on the edge of the field. It could be the old training field at the Cliff, but there was something about it that didn’t feel right. There’s mud under his cleats. He’s thinking about washing them off, later, because he’s only got the one pair- again, something seemed wrong, but he’s not sure what- when he sees David. 

No, it’s not David. It’s Becks. He’s still got braces on, for god’s sakes, crooked teeth and hair not parted from quite the right spot. His hair is brown. 

 

Gary says, “ _ Becks _ .” 

  
  
  


He wakes up. 

  
  
  


The house is very quiet. He listens, but he doesn’t really hear. For the first time there’s the beginning of an ache in his chest that’s hinting at growing bigger, perhaps so big it may never cease. Gary thinks,  _ No _ and then  _ But I have to _ and then- 

 

He closes his eyes and counts to ten. Before he gets to seven he hears, faintly, the front doorbell ring. Footsteps come toward him, soft on the tiles. 

 

“Gary?” 

 

Gary sits up.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
